EVENTS

Insult the monotheisms

An Egyptian court has sentenced a student to three years in jail for announcing on Facebook that he is an atheist and for insulting Islam, his lawyer said Sunday.

Karim al-Banna, a 21-year-old whose own father testified against him, was jailed by a court in the Nile Delta province of Baheira on Saturday, lawyer Ahmed Abdel Nabi told AFP.

I’m going to have to start doing more of this “insulting Islam” thing, to make up for the people who aren’t allowed to.

Abdel Nabi said his client’s father had testified against his son, charging that he “was embracing extremist ideas against Islam”.

Banna’s name had appeared in a list of known atheists in a local daily after which his neighbours harassed him, said Ishaq Ibrahim, a researcher on religion and beliefs at the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights.

When Banna went to file a complaint against them at a police station, he was accused of insulting Islam and arrested, said Ibrahim, who has been tracking Banna’s case.

Banna has been in custody since November.

Simply for being an atheist.

The authorities have stepped up measures, including organising workshops, to counter atheism.

Comments

Hard to tell if the current military junta running Egypt is US-backed or not; clearly the US did not approve of the muslim brotherhood running the show and probably helped destabilize Morsi by not treating him as if he was a legitimate head of state. But who knows what our “exporters of democracy” are up to in Versailles on the Potomac.